She's Come So Far
by TheBreakfastGenie
Summary: AU: In a world where Donna Noble turned right and never met the Doctor, Rose Tyler arrives in time. She saves him from dying under the Thames with the Racnoss. But their reunion doesn't go exactly as she planned, and in another universe the stars are still going out. Ten/Rose Rated T just in case.


"My home planet is far away and long since gone, but its name lives on." He paused, no longer out of mercy, for he had given the Empress of the Racnoss her chance, but to deepen the impact of the blow he was about to deliver.

"_Galifrey_."

The Empress hissed and howled, screaming of her murdered people, of her dying children, and the Doctor stood resolute.

"I warned you." He raised the trio of devices from his pockets. (He would not call them weapons. Weapons destroyed. Weapons took life. He was saving those who deserved this planet. He was doing the right thing. Wasn't he?) "You did this."

He cast the red spheres into the spacious sewer, watching stonily as they ripped holes in the workings, releasing thousands of gallons of water, flooding the Racnoss, killing them.

No. Not killing them. Saving them. The humans, saving the humans.

His face was lit by the fire of destruction, the perfect picture of a righteous god as the water cascaded around him and the Racnoss Empress's words were lost in the cacophony of the crashing waves.

And then a voice rang out over the arachnoid's screams, over the drowning tide, a voice that was somehow soft even while shouting, a voice the Doctor recognized and that he was certain he would never hear again.

"Doctor! You can stop now!"

So certain, in fact, that he couldn't even be hearing it now. Of course, he thought to himself bitterly. Of course this Christmas couldn't just be over. There was never any rest for this weary warrior, this restless wanderer, this—wait, was that the Lion King again?

It was so natural that there would be another hostile alien tonight, and that it would choose _her_ with which to assault him. But that didn't matter.

No, it did matter. It did matter because it made everything so much easier.

_Doctor! You can stop now!_

Her voice, and, should he choose to acknowledge this additional atrocity, this monster that called out, taunting him with a stolen melody, her face. Indeed, her entire figure.

And turn he did, before he could stop himself, and there she (it) stood, in black pants and a blue leather jacket and soaked blonde hair just a little longer than he remembered…

So he stopped.

He stopped and he strolled over to this creature, this _criminal_, who dared lie to him in such a disastrous manner.

"Alright," he said, his face twisting unkindly as the grief of the last months finally completed its metamorphosis into pure, pulsing anger. "Alright, yeah, I'll stop, because the Racnoss isn't my main concern, not anymore. Now I've got to deal with _you_."

He spat _you _as if it were the most putrid syllable he'd ever pronounced, and he believed perhaps it was.

She looked up at him with her beautiful (horrible) brown eyes, still filled with compassion, and dared to meet his gaze.

"Doctor, it's me."

"Don't. Even. _Bother_," he ground out, emphasizing each furious syllable. "I don't know yet who or what you are, but I will find out. Oh, I _will_, and very, very soon. And then you're going to suffer the consequences of a hasty decision."

She (the apparition, the forgery) parted her lips as if to speak but he did not stop.

"Bet you thought you were real clever, didn't you? Oh, I'm sure the legend gets around, and you think, who can you copy, what form can you take, who's face can you _steal _if you're going to confront me? And of course you choose her, but you shouldn't have. Oh you really, really, shouldn't have, because you'r wrong, all wrong, all of you. You think you can weaken me, but all you've done is make me angry. Very, very angry. Are you prepared, do you think, to feel the wrath of a Time Lord?"

This was _not _going as Rose had expected. Or at least, not as she'd hoped. She supposed it would have been too easy for him to welcome her back with open arms, no matter how much she longed for those arms now. She tried to be angry with him for treating her this way, for not believing her, but honestly would she have done any different? She wouldn't and she knew because she _hadn't_, looking at this now beloved face for the first time, she'd done more than struggle to accept it, and she'd had more facts than he did.

So should couldn't be angry, but still she couldn't help feeling (more than?) a little hurt.

And irritated because, as it turned out, he was _still _talking.

"Whole gauntlet of things you could be, really. Any number of intergalactic peoples who take the forms of others, through copies or through other means. Nestene consciousness, bitchy trampolines with illegal psychografts, Slitheen… and those are just the ones she's met directly. Couldn't be any of those, of course. Well, not Slitheen or psychograft, anyway. Both of those require use of the actual body. Same with Sontaran cloning technology, or at least a DNA sample, and she's never met them. Could be Nestene consciousness, I suppose, but I don't know if they can make a copy across universes with the walls closed, seems a bit out of range. Could be a Zygon, maybe, but distance seems to be a recurring problem."

"Zygon?" Rose asked incredulously, unable to restrain herself from a bit of a laugh. "You think I'm a Zygon, seriously?"

"Are you then?" the Doctor continued, his trademark curiosity bleeding into the uncharacteristic (or was it?) rage. "Zygon, is that it? Have you discovered a more sophisticated way of making copies? Based on an image, perhaps? Or did you obtain a DNA sample?" Come to think of it, Rose had shed more than enough skin cells on a hundred different planets for an enterprising alien to work with. "Is that what you did? Stole a piece of Rose, or bought a stolen piece, rather, which isn't really any better when you think about it? Built this copy from the ground up so you could… do what, exactly? Got another plan for the Earth? Or for me!"

"I'm not a Zygon!" Rose protested, but it was useless.

"That's what you lot always say," the Doctor countered, "and really, even if I've got the species wrong, the only difference that makes is the easiest way to kill you."

"Oh, we're doing 'kill first, ask questions later' are we?" Rose asked, frustrated. "You keep telling me I'm not really me, but maybe _you're _not really the Doctor."

"You're not her," he asserted coldly.

Making a noise of frustration, Rose finally took advantage of the fact that he was insistently standing close enough to kill her with his bare hands and took a firm hold of one, his right hand, his fighting hand, the one she'd watched grow a year of this world's time ago shortly after the reverse of this conversation had played out.

"If that's true," she began, keeping his hand captive in her intimate grip until his struggles stilled in shock as he recognized her words, "Then how can I know this?"

His words from last Christmas came back to her and Rose poured them into him as surely as she'd poured the Time Vortex into the Dalek Emperor.

"Trapped in that cellar, surrounded by shop window dummies, you said one word. Just one word you said… run!"

Rose did her best to add his previous body's signature intonation to the last word, though she felt none of the adrenaline-induced joy the Doctor had felt at the time.

It was enough, though, because it worked. The combination of the gesture and the words got through to him and as she watched all the fight ran out of him like the water had just done from the pipes and he whispered desperately "Rose?"

His whole life, his whole universe was in that single word, that monosyllabic question that lay both his hearts bare.

"Yeah," she said, her face lighting up in her signature smile at his recognition and _oh_, how could he have been so stupid? How could he have been so blind? No life form, no matter how advanced, could ever imitate Rose Tyler's perfect smile.

"It's really me," she continued, her perfect smile traveling upwards to those kind brown eyes, "Doctor, I came back."

"Rose," he gasped, choking on something that was maybe a laugh and maybe a sob and maybe al the things he'd wanted to say to her since she'd be gone. "_Oh_, oh, _Rose_," was all he could manage as he collapsed against her chest, and the defender of the Earth gathered him into her arms and held him at last.


End file.
